With the release of vRanger Pro 4.0 we are introducing a more efficient and scalable way to perform backups. So on that note, let’s take a second and reflect on how many VMs you have. Think back to before you had virtualization, would you have as many VMs as physical machines if you didn’t have virtualization? In most cases the answer might be no. But, because it’s as easy as a “right click” to deploy and sysprep a VM, most likely your VM count is a lot higher than if you had all physical hardware. This is a leading cause for “VM Sprawl”, “Backup Sprawl” and even possibly “Backup Window Sprawl”, as the number of VMs you want protected at the image level has grown exponentially. As your VM count grows you want to keep leveraging your investment in virtualization and the VM portability or DR/BC that comes along with it.

One of our many goals of the vRanger Pro 4.0 DPP release is to help reduce the overall backup window. With the introduction of our “Direct to Target Architecture”, we are proving a scalable way to backup a large amount of VMs in short period of time. If you look at proxy based solutions you have to scale out your proxy servers along with your storage, this can be costly and complex to manage. With our direct to target architecture you only need to add more storage targets for the more backups you want to do at one time. This type of backup traffic spread across many ESX hosts can send more data than a single storage target can handle. If your storage target can only handle let’s say 20 backups at one time but you want to be able to do 40, you can just configure another storage target in vRanger Pro 4.0 and you would be able to scale horizontally.

This type of architecture puts the vRanger server out of band to the backup traffic instead of in band like proxy based solutions. This allows you to run vRanger Pro 4.0 DPP on a VM or physical machine, this no longer matters. If you were to put a proxy based solution in a VM you would end up using 2X more virtual resources to get the backups from the ESX host to the target storage because the data would have to go from the ESX host to proxy VM, then to the storage target.

Another great benefit of this architecture is the centralized management of your backups over many datacenters. For example, if you have datacenter A and datacenter B each with their own storage you could create backup jobs from a single install of vRanger Pro 4.0 for both datacenters. When you’re creating the backup job you would just pick VMs at datacenter B and your storage target at datacenter B, this will force the backup traffic to stay between the ESX hosts and the storage target at datacenter B.

The current direct to target architecture protocols that will be supported in 4.0 will be CIFS (windows share or Unix emulating window share) and SFTP. The SFTP direct to target protocol is good for backing up from the DMZ and only needing to open port 22 from the DMZ to the LAN. When using SFTP you still get all the great features over this secured port like full, incremental, differential and instant file level restore.

Thanks for reading, as I just wanted to share a major architectural shift from vRanger Pro 3.x to vRanger Pro 4.x Data Protection Platform (DPP).

Sincerely,

Jason Mattox

Learn more about vRanger Pro 4.0 DPP at www.vizioncore.com/evolution.

We are pleased to introduce Vizioncorum – the official blogging site of Vizioncore.

As virtualization becomes more mainstream, we felt it would be very valuable to the community to share our expertise and knowledge with both those new to virtualization and those longer-term users of the technology. We are a leader in virtualization with a long track record that encompasses implementations across thousands of companies all over the world, all with unique needs and environments. To say that “we’ve seen it all” doesn’t even begin to catalogue our experience. With this experience we have developed a body of knowledge about best-practices that would benefit anyone involved with this game-changing technology.

Why should you trust the information that comes from the Vizioncore bloggers on this site? After all, there is a lot of “noise” in the market place with “claims” and “promises” but I thought I would provide a short history on Vizioncore so you can feel confident that what appears on this site is from true industry leaders and experts.

• We were founded in 2002, which makes us an “old timer” in virtualization. We started out as a consulting firm but quickly parlayed our experience in solving customers’ business and IT problems into pure virtualization software development in 2005.
• We pioneered the concept of leveraging virtualization for a DR Strategy both for the SMB and the Enterprise with the introduction of esxRanger in 2005 ( now vRanger Pro) and we are about to take a quantum leap forward by transforming vRanger Pro into the Data Protection Platform for your IT systems with vRanger Pro 4.0 – DPP.
• We were the first to offer an award-winning VM replication product (vReplicator) and the first to offer VM host monitoring and chargeback, (vCharter, now vFoglight Pro which recently received the VMware-Ready Optimized designation).
• We were the first to offer a VM resizing/realignment product (vOptimizer Pro – a Best of VMworld Finalist Award winner).
• We are the only virtualization company today that has pulled together a holistic set of solutions to address every stage of the virtualization implementation – from the initial phase of server consolidation and migration from physical to virtual servers, through backup and recovery and DR, then moving on to the monitoring and fine-tuning stages of optimizing storage and streamlining administration of VM environments through automation as they grow larger and more complex.
• Our virtualization experts have more than 100 years of combined virtualization experience among them in both software development and customer environments, and have spoken at countless virtualization events, written articles and books on the topic and sat on numerous expert panels in recent years. Our blog panelists are well connected with other industry experts  and regularly exchange ideas to better promote virtualization.
• We were the first and only pure play virtualization company to be included in the VMware Backup Guide and VMware Alliance Affiliate program, alongside established IT industry players, and needless to say, we are a VMware Community Source member as well as a VMware Technology Alliance Partner.
• We are also a subsidiary of Quest Software, the global leader in database and applications management software which allows us many resources to further our momentum in developing new solutions.

We continue to attract new customers at a blistering pace and we are fast approaching the 20,000 mark. Our clients are global and range from the SMB to the Enterprise. This spectrum provides us with real-world testing of our products under a wide breadth of scenarios, and our products stand up to the rigorous demands placed on them. We partner with leaders in hardware, software and storage to help provide the very best and complete solutions to customers.

One final word about why we are launching Vizioncorum today. As the virtualization industry continues to grow, it’s going to become a lot harder to separate the hype from the facts.  There are a lot of companies and people getting involved in virtualization and I wanted to reinforce that you can trust and rely on this site for rock-solid, proven strategies and guidance as you move through your virtualization projects.  Vizioncorum is just an extension of what we at Vizioncore have always done and promoted throughout our history – do all we can to help in the success of our clients and partners.

Enjoy the site as our focus will be to provide as much valuable virtualization knowledge, advice and expertise as we can - thank you!

Chris Akerberg